Kazakhstan to expand Kazakh Wikipedia

NGOs, political figures and common people of Kazakhstan will be jointly promoting and expanding the Kazakh language content of Wikipedia, Tengrinews.kz reports. The major objective of the movement is to bring the number of Kazakh-language entries to 200 000 by the end of the year. This was announced by Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, founder of Wikibilim Foundation [an NGO to develop the Kazakh Wikipedia], at a press conference. As of today, registered users of the Kazakh Wikipedia make up a bit over 8.5 thousand. “When we just started work on the Kazakh Wikipedia, we only had 8 000 entries. The number has grown to 25 000, every day we are growing by another 500 entries. We have 150 volunteers in the team”, Rauan Kenzhekhanuly said. Kazakhstan’s website www.wikibilim.kz will be providing guidelines on how to contribute to the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. “This is going to be a whole Internet-based community to make common people aware of the Kazakh Wikipedia (…) few people used to know about the resource. Now everyone will find easy-to-follow video instructions on how to contribute to the Kazakh Wikipedia content”, Kenzhekhanuly said. Ting Chen of the Wikimedia Foundation attending the press conference said that “the Foundation is considering launching a regional office in Kazakhstan. Altogether, there are a total of 30 representation offices. I believe Kazakhstan stands all chances to be home to one”, he said.